Standing on the Shoulders of a Giant

In June Tony Hung, M.D. ’13, M.B.A. ’13 (RES ’16) will complete his Internal Medicine residency at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. The program enabled him to pursue his interest in oncology, as well as integrative East-West medicine and healthcare innovation. In the fall of 2015, he launched iCareX, a nonprofit passion project. iCareX’s first innovative program, Project Health Coach, trains undergraduate students as health coaches to enhance the value of clinical care for underserved populations. Dr. Hung is currently chief resident at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center.

Five years ago I traveled to Beijing, China, where, immersed in the richness of culture and surrounded by the ancient Great Wall, I explored traditional Chinese healing in a personal attempt to integrate the best of medicine from the East with the West.

My journey actually began at UCLA years before and can be attributed to my mentor, Ka-Kit Hui ’71, M.D. ’75 (RES ’78, FEL ’79), founder and director of the UCLA Center for East-West Medicine (CEWM). Dr. Hui inspired me to see medicine through two lenses and to unify the finest of both worlds of healing.

“You are our very first Shirley Hui East-West Medicine Scholar, Tony,” said Dr Hui. I recalled his tremendous hope for me as I curiously stepped into the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in Beijing with my stethoscope over my shoulder and a stack of acupuncture needles inside my white coat pocket.

Like the unique expression of language, with the West’s alphabet and the East’s characters, medicine has its distinctive expression between the polar paradigms. In a synergetic harmony, integrative East-West medicine brings the two worlds together like quantum mechanics unified the phenomenon of light to behave simultaneously as a particle or a wave. As Einstein wrote, “It seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the other, while at times we may use either…separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do."

Over the past decades, the UCLA CEWM has proven the power in the marriage of both medical paradigms with its ability to offer value-added care beyond conventional therapy at every stage in the continuum of health and disease. The ingenuity of the East-West model works to augment the body’s inherent mechanism of healing and to restore the individual balance of optimal health.

“Optimal healthcare that is effective, safe, accessible and affordable should become the priority of every country’s healthcare system,” said Dr. Hui at the 2000 World Health Organization International Symposium in Japan.

With the emerging need to redesign our current healthcare system, I too believe that a concerted effort of collaboration among the various stakeholders, as well as the courageous spirit to think differently and to see and appreciate the value of innovative models of practice beyond the conventional standard of care are what will underpin its success.

“That is what iCareX is all about,” I now tell my UCLA undergraduate students as we launch our very own Project Health Coach, with its vision to bridge the gap of healthcare disparity and to shake up healthcare through creativity, integrity, kindness and compassion.

As I humbly strive toward my next journey as an aspiring leader in medicine and reflect on Dr. Hui’s influence on my growth, I think of Sir Isaac Newton’s famous quote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Thank you Dr. Hui.

For more information on iCareX and Project Health Coach, visit iCareXhealth.com.

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